1000 resultados para Community
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Report on a special investigation of the Lake Mills Community School District for the period July 1, 2005 through December 31, 2010
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Community Partnerships for Protecting Children (CPPC) is an approach that neighborhoods, towns, cities and states can adopt to improve how children are protected from abuse and/or neglect. The State of Iowa recognizes that the child protection agency, working alone, cannot keep children safe from abuse and neglect. It aims to blend the work and expertise of professionals and community members to bolster supports for vulnerable families and children. Community Partnerships is not a program rather, it is a way of working with families to help services and supports to be more inviting, need-based, accessible and relevant. It incorporates prevention strategies as well as those interventions needed to address abuse, once identified.
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AIM: The study aims to evaluate the effects of assertive community treatment (ACT) on the mental health and overall functioning of adolescents suffering from severe psychiatric disorders and who refuse any traditional child psychiatric care. There are a few studies evaluating the effects of ACT on a population of adolescents with psychiatric disorders. This short report highlights the impact of an ACT programme tailored to the needs of these patients, not only as an alternative to hospitalization, but also as a new form of intervention for patients that are difficult to engage. METHODS: The effect of ACT on 35 adolescents using the Health of the Nation Outcome Scales for Children and Adolescents (HoNOSCA) as a measuring tool in pre- and post-intervention was evaluated. RESULTS: The results show that the intervention was associated with a significant improvement on the HoNOSCA overall score, with the following items showing significant amelioration: hyperactivity/focus problems, non-organic somatic symptoms, emotional symptoms, scholastic/language skills, peer relationships, family relationships and school attendance. CONCLUSION: ACT appears as a feasible intervention for hard-to-engage adolescents suffering from psychiatric disorders. The intervention seems to improve their mental health and functioning. This pilot study may serve as a basis to prepare a controlled study that will also take the costs of the intervention into account.
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The study of the ecology of soil microbial communities at relevant spatial scales is primordial in the wide Amazon region due to the current land use changes. In this study, the diversity of the Archaea domain (community structure) and ammonia-oxidizing Archaea (richness and community composition) were investigated using molecular biology-based techniques in different land-use systems in western Amazonia, Brazil. Soil samples were collected in two periods with high precipitation (March 2008 and January 2009) from Inceptisols under primary tropical rainforest, secondary forest (5-20 year old), agricultural systems of indigenous people and cattle pasture. Denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis of polymerase chain reaction-amplified DNA (PCR-DGGE) using the 16S rRNA gene as a biomarker showed that archaeal community structures in crops and pasture soils are different from those in primary forest soil, which is more similar to the community structure in secondary forest soil. Sequence analysis of excised DGGE bands indicated the presence of crenarchaeal and euryarchaeal organisms. Based on clone library analysis of the gene coding the subunit of the enzyme ammonia monooxygenase (amoA) of Archaea (306 sequences), the Shannon-Wiener function and Simpson's index showed a greater ammonia-oxidizing archaeal diversity in primary forest soils (H' = 2.1486; D = 0.1366), followed by a lower diversity in soils under pasture (H' = 1.9629; D = 0.1715), crops (H' = 1.4613; D = 0.3309) and secondary forest (H' = 0.8633; D = 0.5405). All cloned inserts were similar to the Crenarchaeota amoA gene clones (identity > 95 %) previously found in soils and sediments and distributed primarily in three major phylogenetic clusters. The findings indicate that agricultural systems of indigenous people and cattle pasture affect the archaeal community structure and diversity of ammonia-oxidizing Archaea in western Amazon soils.
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The Division of Community Action Agencies is located within the Iowa Department of Human Rights and is the focal point for Community Action Agency activities within Iowa government. The Division of Community Action Agencies exists to develop and expand the capacity at the community level to assist families and individuals to achieve economic and social self-sufficiency, and to ensure that the basic energy needs of Iowas low-income population are met. The Division is comprised of the Bureau of Community Services, the Bureau of Energy Assistance and the Bureau of Weatherization.
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The Division of Community Action Agencies is located within the Iowa Department of Human Rights and is the focal point for Community Action Agency activities within Iowa government. The Division of Community Action Agencies exists to develop and expand the capacity at the community level to assist families and individuals to achieve economic and social self-sufficiency, and to ensure that the basic energy needs of Iowas low-income population are met. The Division is comprised of the Bureau of Community Services, the Bureau of Energy Assistance and the Bureau of Weatherization.
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La prsente tude est la fois une valuation du processus de la mise en oeuvre et des impacts de la police de proximit dans les cinq plus grandes zones urbaines de Suisse - Ble, Berne, Genve, Lausanne et Zurich. La police de proximit (community policing) est la fois une philosophie et une stratgie organisationnelle qui favorise un partenariat renouvel entre la police et les communauts locales dans le but de rsoudre les problmes relatifs la scurit et l'ordre public. L'valuation de processus a analys des donnes relatives aux rformes internes de la police qui ont t obtenues par l'intermdiaire d'entretiens semi-structurs avec des administrateurs cls des cinq dpartements de police, ainsi que dans des documents crits de la police et d'autres sources publiques. L'valuation des impacts, quant elle, s'est base sur des variables contextuelles telles que des statistiques policires et des donnes de recensement, ainsi que sur des indicateurs d'impacts construit partir des donnes du Swiss Crime Survey (SCS) relatives au sentiment d'inscurit, la perception du dsordre public et la satisfaction de la population l'gard de la police. Le SCS est un sondage rgulier qui a permis d'interroger des habitants des cinq grandes zones urbaines plusieurs reprises depuis le milieu des annes 1980. L'valuation de processus a abouti un Calendrier des activits visant crer des donnes de panel permettant de mesurer les progrs raliss dans la mise en oeuvre de la police de proximit l'aide d'une grille d'valuation six dimensions des intervalles de cinq ans entre 1990 et 2010. L'valuation des impacts, effectue ex post facto, a utilis un concept de recherche non-exprimental (observational design) dans le but d'analyser les impacts de diffrents modles de police de proximit dans des zones comparables travers les cinq villes tudies. Les quartiers urbains, dlimits par zone de code postal, ont ainsi t regroups par l'intermdiaire d'une typologie ralise l'aide d'algorithmes d'apprentissage automatique (machine learning). Des algorithmes superviss et non superviss ont t utiliss sur les donnes haute dimensionnalit relatives la criminalit, la structure socio-conomique et dmographique et au cadre bti dans le but de regrouper les quartiers urbains les plus similaires dans des clusters. D'abord, les cartes auto-organisatrices (self-organizing maps) ont t utilises dans le but de rduire la variance intra-cluster des variables contextuelles et de maximiser simultanment la variance inter-cluster des rponses au sondage. Ensuite, l'algorithme des forts d'arbres dcisionnels (random forests) a permis la fois d'valuer la pertinence de la typologie de quartier labore et de slectionner les variables contextuelles cls afin de construire un modle parcimonieux faisant un minimum d'erreurs de classification. Enfin, pour l'analyse des impacts, la mthode des appariements des coefficients de propension (propensity score matching) a t utilise pour quilibrer les chantillons prtest-posttest en termes d'ge, de sexe et de niveau d'ducation des rpondants au sein de chaque type de quartier ainsi identifi dans chacune des villes, avant d'effectuer un test statistique de la diffrence observe dans les indicateurs d'impacts. De plus, tous les rsultats statistiquement significatifs ont t soumis une analyse de sensibilit (sensitivity analysis) afin d'valuer leur robustesse face un biais potentiel d des covariables non observes. L'tude relve qu'au cours des quinze dernires annes, les cinq services de police ont entam des rformes majeures de leur organisation ainsi que de leurs stratgies oprationnelles et qu'ils ont nou des partenariats stratgiques afin de mettre en oeuvre la police de proximit. La typologie de quartier dveloppe a abouti une rduction de la variance intra-cluster des variables contextuelles et permet d'expliquer une partie significative de la variance inter-cluster des indicateurs d'impacts avant la mise en oeuvre du traitement. Ceci semble suggrer que les mthodes de gocomputation aident quilibrer les covariables observes et donc rduire les menaces relatives la validit interne d'un concept de recherche non-exprimental. Enfin, l'analyse des impacts a rvl que le sentiment d'inscurit a diminu de manire significative pendant la priode 2000-2005 dans les quartiers se trouvant l'intrieur et autour des centres-villes de Berne et de Zurich. Ces amliorations sont assez robustes face des biais dus des covariables inobserves et covarient dans le temps et l'espace avec la mise en oeuvre de la police de proximit. L'hypothse alternative envisageant que les diminutions observes dans le sentiment d'inscurit soient, partiellement, un rsultat des interventions policires de proximit semble donc tre aussi plausible que l'hypothse nulle considrant l'absence absolue d'effet. Ceci, mme si le concept de recherche non-exprimental mis en oeuvre ne peut pas compltement exclure la slection et la rgression la moyenne comme explications alternatives. The current research project is both a process and impact evaluation of community policing in Switzerland's five major urban areas - Basel, Bern, Geneva, Lausanne, and Zurich. Community policing is both a philosophy and an organizational strategy that promotes a renewed partnership between the police and the community to solve problems of crime and disorder. The process evaluation data on police internal reforms were obtained through semi-structured interviews with key administrators from the five police departments as well as from police internal documents and additional public sources. The impact evaluation uses official crime records and census statistics as contextual variables as well as Swiss Crime Survey (SCS) data on fear of crime, perceptions of disorder, and public attitudes towards the police as outcome measures. The SCS is a standing survey instrument that has polled residents of the five urban areas repeatedly since the mid-1980s. The process evaluation produced a "Calendar of Action" to create panel data to measure community policing implementation progress over six evaluative dimensions in intervals of five years between 1990 and 2010. The impact evaluation, carried out ex post facto, uses an observational design that analyzes the impact of the different community policing models between matched comparison areas across the five cities. Using ZIP code districts as proxies for urban neighborhoods, geospatial data mining algorithms serve to develop a neighborhood typology in order to match the comparison areas. To this end, both unsupervised and supervised algorithms are used to analyze high-dimensional data on crime, the socio-economic and demographic structure, and the built environment in order to classify urban neighborhoods into clusters of similar type. In a first step, self-organizing maps serve as tools to develop a clustering algorithm that reduces the within-cluster variance in the contextual variables and simultaneously maximizes the between-cluster variance in survey responses. The random forests algorithm then serves to assess the appropriateness of the resulting neighborhood typology and to select the key contextual variables in order to build a parsimonious model that makes a minimum of classification errors. Finally, for the impact analysis, propensity score matching methods are used to match the survey respondents of the pretest and posttest samples on age, gender, and their level of education for each neighborhood type identified within each city, before conducting a statistical test of the observed difference in the outcome measures. Moreover, all significant results were subjected to a sensitivity analysis to assess the robustness of these findings in the face of potential bias due to some unobserved covariates. The study finds that over the last fifteen years, all five police departments have undertaken major reforms of their internal organization and operating strategies and forged strategic partnerships in order to implement community policing. The resulting neighborhood typology reduced the within-cluster variance of the contextual variables and accounted for a significant share of the between-cluster variance in the outcome measures prior to treatment, suggesting that geocomputational methods help to balance the observed covariates and hence to reduce threats to the internal validity of an observational design. Finally, the impact analysis revealed that fear of crime dropped significantly over the 2000-2005 period in the neighborhoods in and around the urban centers of Bern and Zurich. These improvements are fairly robust in the face of bias due to some unobserved covariate and covary temporally and spatially with the implementation of community policing. The alternative hypothesis that the observed reductions in fear of crime were at least in part a result of community policing interventions thus appears at least as plausible as the null hypothesis of absolutely no effect, even if the observational design cannot completely rule out selection and regression to the mean as alternative explanations.
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Reaudit report on the Johnston Community School District for the period July 1, 2009 through June 30, 2010
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Report on a special investigation of the Clay Central-Everly Community School District for the period July 1, 2005 through November 30, 2010
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Audit report on Indian Hills Community College in Ottumwa, Iowa for the year ended June 30, 2011
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Audit report on Clarke Community School District in Osceola, Iowa for the year ended June 30, 2011
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Audit report on Sheldon Community School District in Sheldon, Iowa for the year ended June 30, 2011
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Report on a special investigation of the Clarke Community School District cheerleading account for the period August 19, 2008 through June 30, 2011
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Information on the effects of released wild-type or genetically engineered bacteria on resident bacterial communities is important to assess the potential risks associated with the introduction of these organisms into agroecosystems. The rifampicin-resistant biocontrol strain Pseudomonas fluorescens CHA0-Rif and its derivative CHA0-Rif/pME3424, which has improved biocontrol activity and enhanced production of the antibiotics 2,4-diacetylphloroglucinol (Phl) and pyoluteorin (Plt), were introduced into soil microcosms and the culturable bacterial community developing on cucumber roots was investigated 10 and 52 days later. The introduction of either of the two strains led to a transiently enhanced metabolic activity of the bacterial community on glucose dimers and polymers as measured with BIOLOG GN plates, but natural succession between the two sampling dates changed the metabolic activity of the bacterial community more than did the inoculants. The introduced strains did not significantly affect the abundance of dominant genotypic groups of culturable bacteria discriminated by restriction analysis of amplified 16S rDNA of 2500 individual isolates. About 30-50% of the resident bacteria were very sensitive to Phl and Plt, but neither the wild-type nor CHA0-Rif/pME3424 changed the proportion of sensitive and resistant bacteria in situ. In microcosms with a synthetic bacterial community, both biocontrol strains reduced the population of a strain of Pseudomonas but did not affect the abundance of four other bacterial strains including two highly antibiotic-sensitive isolates. We conclude that detectable perturbations in the metabolic activity of the resident bacterial community caused by the biocontrol strain CHA0-Rif are (i) transient, (ii) similar for the genetically improved derivative CHA0-Rif/pME3424 and (iii) less pronounced than changes in the community structure during plant growth.
